And so the scything
season begins....
Yes folks. It's that time of the year when NCVs' thoughts turn to harvesting. Well, at least the removal of grass from various places in the dale in order to encourage wildflowers to flourish. This week they made a good start with the first of these venues - that of the churchyard at Dacre Banks. It was a good place to get back into the swing of things (see what I did there?). Not too big an area and relatively flat ground. The only downside was the presence of stonework lurking below the vegetation.
We had champion scyther Joe, from the office, in attendance to make sure we were all scything effectively. He has won the Northern Scything Championship twice AND the Eastern Championship too. How lucky were we to have him on the team?
And here he is - looking every inch a champion.
Fortunately we also had the use of Andy C's strimmer to tidy up around the graves stones where we had to avoid blunting the scythe blades unnecessarily.
So - here is the team in action. You can judge their progress for yourself.
Left hand side of the path at the start of the day...
..and the right hand side was as bad.
Andy was up and running
(or swinging) in no time.
Joe gave Tim a 'how to' tutorial...
...and turned him into a Grim Reaper in no time,
just like the one at the top of the page.
(Just not with the red eyes).
Brenda got busy raking up the cut grass,
turning it into sausages...
...which were taken off to the compost
heap in a variety of ways.
Up high...
......and somewhere in the middle.
Brenda and Anita eschewed any of these methods,
opting for the drag bag method.
Erm, excuse me you two.
Less chat - more action!!
As grass was mown, so Adrian donned
the strimming gear and began to
sway to the rhythm of the machine.
It was a hot day and coffeetime in
the shade was a welcome break.
Particularly as birthday biscuits
provided an energy boost.
The churchyard was a hive of activity all day.
The presence of so much stone work
didn't make life easy.
Now you lot - I know you didn't do that patch.
That was the church's lawn mower last week!!
What on earth are you doing now? I thought you had finished!
Oh - just sowing some wildflower seeds,
including yellow rattle to suppress the grass.
By close of play the churchyard was looking very smart,
both to the left of the path...
...and to the right.
The job was completed by 2pm.
Excellent work team!
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